Shavuos

After spending an inspiring Shavuos, I often find myself a little overwhelmed. While most of us get stressed out about getting home on time for Shabbos, or all the preparation that goes into Pesach, I find the days after Shavuos to be stressful. Cheesecake aside, the magnitude of spending an entire evening engaged in Torah study and celebrating our acceptance of that Torah, is awesome.

I find the “high” I get after spending a night learning Torah or listening to a lecture is something I want to hold on to, forever. I want to take it, bottle it, and hide it away for the times when I feel challenged with my learning or my davening. For me, I find it stressful. As I walked home, Shavuos morning, from a night of intellectual and emotional stimulation I had questions running in my mind: What should I learn and where do I start? Who am I to even attempt to get “into learning”? When will I find time?

For some reason my mind wondered back to something I had heard from Rabbi Baruch Klein (Far Rockaway). He said, in the name of the Chofetz Chaim, that the secret to staying inspired is found in the Shema. The Torah says in Devarim (Deuteronomy 6:6): “And these matters that I command you today shall be upon your heart.” All of my answers, according to the Chofetz Chaim, are in this one verse.

What should I learn and where do I start? “And these matters” refers to words of Torah. It really doesn’t matter if you are starting out with Alef-Beis, Chumash, or the laws of Shabbos. Any way that you can increase your Jewish knowledge and grow closer to Hashem is fantastic!! Don’t fall into the trap of there being “too much” to learn. Just pick up a book, go to a class, or go online to any link featured at BeyondBT.

Who am I to even attempt to get “into learning”? It’s easy to look at FFBs or even BTs who have years of Torah learning behind them and think, “There’s no way I can ever catch up to everyone else. I feel like I’m so far behind.” “That I command you” the verse says. Who commands me? Hashem is commanding us. Learning Torah, davening, grown in mitzvah observance all about having a relationship with Hashem. It really doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or what their background is. By definition, a Baal Teshuva is one who goes against the way they were raised or against lifestyle they grew up in. We start off so headstrong and sure of ourselves, yet as we “settle into” yiddishkeit, it’s easy to get caught up the status quo.

When will I find time? “Today” is as good a time as any. Don’t tell yourself you don’t have any time. Remember the Nike commercials: JUST DO IT.

“Shall be upon your heart” means that then entire verse should be constantly in our thoughts throughout the day. Torah is meant to become part of us. Torah Judaism is more that just a lifestyle or a set of laws. It is something that is entwined within the fabric of our being. The opportunities to get close to Hashem are not confined to a night of Shavuos. It’s everyday. It every bracha we choose to make, every kind word we say about another person, and every time we remember that we are connected to Hashem.

Thanks to Rabbi Klein and the Chofetz Chaim, I’m feeling less stressed.

With the help of Hashem, we are approaching the time of the giving of the Torah.

When the Torah was given, there were three great revelations. The first revelation was that Hashem came down onto Har Sinai, and opened up all the heavens and showed us that Ain Od Milvado, there is nothing besides for Him. The second revelation was the Ten Commandments, which contains the entire Torah. The third revelation was that we all stood together with one heart.

The sefarim hakedoshim reveal that there are three kinds of love that we need to seek: love for Hashem, love for the Torah, and love for the Jewish people. These three kinds of love were all revealed at the giving of the Torah. Our love for the Creator was revealed when Hashem revealed Himself to us. Our love for the Torah was revealed through the Ten Commandments. Our love for the Jewish people was revealed when we had complete unity with each other, standing together with one heart.

The Love We Have Towards Ourselves

When a person is born, his power of love isn’t developed yet. He does not know of love for Hashem, for Torah, and for another Jew. He loves himself – and he identifies himself as a body, so he loves his body. As a person gets older, he is supposed to mature and develop his love to become more spiritual, forming a love for Hashem, for Torah, and for other Jews.

When a person loves himself, there are two kinds of love: love for his body (guf), and love for his soul (nefesh).

Unless someone works on his middos, he naturally worries for himself all day, from morning until night. People also think a little about others, more or less, and it depends on each person; some are a bit more purified.

A person worries about his physical needs and for his emotional needs (we are referring to his nefesh habehaimis (“lower, animalistic layer of the soul) and not to the deeper, spiritual needs of the soul).

Most people put more focus on their physical needs. This is usually a very strong kind of love. People eat and drink because they love their body.

Most people are concentrating on their body’s physical needs – and not their soul’s basic emotional needs.

We are not even addressing how people neglect their soul’s spiritual needs, which are higher needs; even the basic emotional needs of a person are often neglected. Most people are busy and occupied with [shopping for] clothing and food. And if that is the situation of Jews today, surely non-Jews are like this too. The world today is mostly running after physical gratification.

Unless a person works to change this, when it comes Shavuos time – a time to prepare for loving Hashem the Torah and the Jews – it is far from him. If he doesn’t meet his soul’s basic emotional needs, he won’t even care about his spiritual needs.

How We Love Others

A person who pays attention to his body and neglects his soul only loves others superficially. He might feel like he “loves” his friends, but in reality, he only loves their bodies.

Even with his family he’s like this; he only loves his wife and children with a “body” kind of love. The Chovos HaLevovos writes that our family is part of our flesh. Therefore, if a person loves only his ‘flesh’, and not his soul, then although he will love his family, he only loves the physical ‘flesh’ of his family. He can love his wife who is called his ‘flesh’ (that is, if he even reaches the basic love for his wife…), but he only loves her from his body, not from his soul.

If a person doesn’t love his own soul, he does not know what it means to love the soul of another. This is because love is an extension of how much a person loves his own self[1]. If a person only loves his ‘flesh’, he will love others only for their ‘flesh’. (One he truly loves his soul, though, is a very inner kind of person). His whole Ahavas Yisrael towards other Jews will be superficial, because he only loves others’ ‘flesh’, and not their souls. This is not Ahavas Yisrael.

We can find that there are certain people who only love their own ‘type’ – similar to how the chassidah\stork only does kindness with other storks, and not with other animals. (And for this reason, the stork is a non-kosher bird, because it does not do real kindness – only to those who are the “same type”…) It is all because most people are only loving the flesh of others, because they only know of love for their flesh, and they do not know of love for the soul.

A person can only love others in the same way he loves himself, because love to others is an extension of how much you love yourself. If one only loves his ‘flesh’ – his physical existence – his love can only go so far as to love the ‘flesh’ of others, but he cannot love their souls. He doesn’t love his own soul.

Simchas Yom Tov

When Shavuos comes, it’s a time of Simchas Yom Tov (rejoicing in the festival). What is the simchah? Is it physical contentment, or it is a spiritual feeling?

Of course, Chazal say[2] that the mitzvah is fulfilled through meat and wine; these things do bring a degree of happiness. But it’s clear that meat and wine are not the entire of happiness of the Yom Tov. This is not only true with regards to Simchas Yom Tov. It is true with regards to all of life: the physical aspects of our life cannot be everything. There is more to life than our physical needs.

When a person does mitzvos – like if he puts on tefillin – it might be on his ‘body’, but it’s not necessarily affecting his soul. This is because if a person identifies himself as a body and not as a soul, it will hamper his connection to anything spiritual.

Learning Torah is spiritual. Even the intellectual aspect of it is spiritual. If a person only identifies with his body and not with his soul, then even if he learns Torah for many hours of the day, it won’t affect his soul.

Overeating: The Prime Example of Materialistic Pursuit

The generation is full of physical desires (including kosher and non-kosher). New things come out every day. When a person pursues them, his soul gets concealed more and more, as the person only gives attention to his physical body. He embodies the possuk, “Ach besari” – “Nothing but my flesh”…

When a person eats and eats, he can get so involved in it that he feels as if the food is a part of him! The Chovos HaLevovos writes that when people indulge in food, it connects a person more and more to materialism, and the more a person indulges, the thicker he is entrenched in the materialism. The person begins to feel very connected to food with the more and more he indulges, and he identifies the food as a part of himself…

Nowadays, when a person meets with a friend, he usually eats with him. Rarely do people meet each other without seeking to have some kind of meal with each other. Why can’t people meet each other and just be happy that they see each other, without eating with each other? With many friendships, it’s based on how eating they have with each other!

When it comes to spending time with family, all people often do is eat meals with each other, and that’s the basis of their whole relationship…

The physical desires of this world all affect us with the more we indulge in it. When we only give attention to the needs of our physical flesh, we experience life only through our physical flesh – and that is how we will see others: as mere physical flesh. Our whole relationship towards others will only be based on recognizing them as physical bodies of flesh.

And, taking this further, rachmana litzlon, that is how a person will also relate to Torah and to Hashem: he will have a very superficial connection with Torah and with Hashem, because he is only living life superficially. Even if he tries to experience a connection with Hashem, he won’t get to it, because he is living only in his physical flesh.

The Maharal says that the more a person attaches himself to choimer\materialism, the less the Torah can enter him. The Torah is spiritual, and it cannot enter materialism.

When two friends meet each other and they feel really close with each other, they will usually hug and kiss each other, as signs of affection. What are their motivations, though? If they only love their bodies, and not their souls, then they are hugging and kissing the other person’s body, not the other’s soul!

They should really wish to hug and kiss the others’ soul, and the signs of physical affection would be a reflection of that inner love for each other. But because they live life through their bodies, they can only know of love for the others’ body…

It is similar to when Esav kissed Yaakov. When Esav kissed Yaakov, he wasn’t kissing the soul of Yaakov. He was kissing the body of Yaakov. It wasn’t a love emanating from his soul, because he only knew of physical gratification. The rules is that “Esav hates Yaakov” – even though he kissed him. Because it wasn’t a real kiss.

But if a person lives a life of the soul, and he loves his soul in turn, he will open himself up to begin to love the soul of others.

The Needs of A Child

The love that most people have for their families is only for their bodies, and not for their souls.

We can see this from the fact that most parents do not provide even the most basic emotional needs of the child, such as that the child should feel loved and happy. They give lots of things to their children, but they don’t provide the emotional needs.

Why? It is because they don’t even give themselves their own emotional needs. Therefore, they don’t realize that their children aren’t getting their emotional needs met, because they don’t give importance in their own life to their own emotional needs.

The Test

If a person was given a choice if he will be given 10 minutes of good food or 10 minutes of happiness, what would he choose?

Here is the litmus test. If a person says he’ll go for the food, it shows how he views life, that his life is all about loving his physical flesh. If a person says he’ll choose happiness, it shows that he identifies with his soul’s needs.

We are not describing a high level to be on. We are talking about how a person experiences life.

What Weddings Have Become Today

Take a look at simchos (celebrations) today. When people go to a wedding, how many of them can say that they rejoiced the chosson and kallah? What is the simcha that most people have by weddings? The food! People go to weddings and eat and eat and eat; weddings nowadays have become an entire evening for one to simply fulfill his physical desires! What does this have to with rejoicing a chosson and kallah?!

A person often gets caught up in all the good food there, and he often doesn’t even get around to rejoicing the chosson and kallah. If we ask him, “Did you get to rejoice the chosson\kallah?” The answer is, “I didn’t even think about that. I was too busy eating the food and having a good time.”

If you ask him if he enjoyed the wedding, he might answer, “Sure, I enjoyed the wedding.” Baruch Hashem, he enjoyed it. He enjoyed it all for himself; he didn’t even think to rejoice the chosson or kallah. Can we call this simcha?! Is this the simcha of a wedding?!

The only happiness that we have today – conceptually – is (besides for Yom Tov) by a wedding, a simchas chosson v’kallah. But to our chagrin, weddings today are not about simcha – people go just for the food. They gratify their bodies through it, not their souls.

Changing

The choice that everyone has on this world is: If he will live life through his body, or through his soul.

A person should ask himself how much physical gratification he’s getting, versus how much of his basic soul needs that he is getting. One should try thinking about this every day.

If anyone reflects, he’ll find that most of the day is spent on physical gratification – whether it’s coffee, smoking, food, newspapers, etc. Each to his own.

To begin to change this, one should try to make sure that he’s giving himself at least a little attention each day to his soul’s needs.

Today, pleasure is often only experienced sensually, with the physical. People often are completely devoid of experiencing any enjoyment whatsoever with regards to their souls.

A person can start to change this by making sure to give his soul a little pleasure each day. This is just the beginning step.

When a person then feels a desire for something physical, such as for food – if he feels that he can give it up for something that is a soul need, he is making progress with this. It shows that he has begun to change his perspective at least a little.

Someone who does this and gets used to this will come to an amazing discovery. He will begin to actually feel others. He will feel other’s happiness when they make a simcha, and he will feel their sadness when they go through a loss. His soul will be able to feel the other’s soul.

A Newly Developed Awareness

The more a person gets used to satisfying his soul’s basic needs, he will begin to live a life of the soul. It will open a whole new kind of awareness in himself.

Most people identify themselves as a body and live life through that awareness. People know intellectually about the soul, but they are mostly experiencing life only through their body.

Once a person identifies himself more with his soul, he will feel like his body is a heavy weight upon him. He will feel like, “This body of mine that I’m carrying all the time is so heavy!” Even if he isn’t a heavy person, he will still feel that his body is like a heavy weight upon him that he has to carry around. He used to think his body was himself, so he didn’t feel this heaviness as a burden. He thought his body was “Me.” Now that he has begun to identify himself as a soul, his body feels like something on top of him that’s a heavy load. Slowly, his desires for the physical will listen.

This has to become a natural feeling toward oneself, and in this way, one will begin to naturally feel that others are souls as well – as opposed to feeling them as mere bodies of physical flesh.

Feeling Another’s Soul

To give an example: When two friends meet each other and they shake each other’s hands, what do they feel? Do they just feel each other’s hands, or do they feel the other’s soul? If the person only feels the other’s hands, then he is acting with the same emotions with which a non-Jew lives life.

When a person meets another, why doesn’t he feel if the other is in a happy mood or a sad mood? It is because he only feels the other’s body. He doesn’t feel the other’s soul.

The more a person gives attention to his own soul’s needs, the more he will naturally feel another soul, as he begins to pay attention to his own. He will feel both the emotional as well as the spiritual needs of others. Without feeling oneself as a soul, love for others doesn’t even begin.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that after beginning to change his mindset that he will have perfect love toward others; he will still feel bothered by some people. But at least he has begun to open up in himself the ability to love others, and he’s on his way to building his love for others.

Leaving The Body And Entering The Soul

When we heard the Torah at Har Sinai, our souls left us. In other words, we left the perspective of the body and entered the perspective of our soul!

This shows us that the way to prepare for the Torah – [at least] one of the ways – is to leave our body’s perspective and to instead enter into our soul a bit. This will resemble how the souls of the Jewish people left their bodies at Har Sinai.

May we be zoche to leave the thick materialism of this world and instead feel how we are a soul, beginning from the most basic needs of our soul [our emotional happiness], and then to the more spiritual needs of our soul, until we finally reach the highest part of our soul – the point of total d’veykus (attachment) with Hashem.

“And you shall count for yourselves from the day after the rest day, from the day when you bring the Omer of the waving — seven weeks, they shall be complete.” — Vayikra 23:15

Sefer HaChinuch: The Torah commands us to count the Omer so we can relive the Exodus from Mitzrayim. Just as the Jews back then anxiously anticipated the great day when they were to receive the Torah, so too we count the days till Shavuos, the Yom Tov that commemorates the giving of the Torah. To the Jews then, accepting the Torah on Har Sinai was even greater than their redemption from slavery. So we count each day to bring ourselves to that sense of great enthusiasm, as if to say, “When will that day come?”

With these words the Sefer HaChinuch defines the mitzvah of Sefiras HaOmer. The difficulty with this is the statement that “to the Jews then, receiving of the Torah was even greater than being freed from slavery.” It seems hard to imagine that anything would be greater to a slave than being freed. This concept is even more perplexing when we envision what it was like to be a slave in Mitzrayim.

A life of suffering and bloodshed

The life of a Jew in Mitzrayim was one of misery and suffering. They had no rights. They had no life. They couldn’t own property, choose their own destiny, or protect their own children. They didn’t even have the right to their own time. A Mitzri could at any moment demand a Jew’s utter and complete compliance to do his bidding. If a Jew walked in the streets, it was every Mitzri’s right to whisk him away, without question and without recourse, and force him into slave labor for whatever he saw fit.

Waking in the early morning to the crack of the Mitzri’s whip, the Jews were pushed to the limit of human endurance till late at night when they fell asleep in the fields. Without rest, without breaks, the Jews lugged heavy loads and lifted huge rocks. Sweat, tears, and bloodshed were their lot. In the heat of the sweltering sun and in the cold of the desert night, at the risk of life and limb, the Jew was oppressed with a demon-like fury. A beast of burden is treated wisely to ensure its well-being, but not the Jew. He was pushed beyond all limits. Finally, when Pharaoh was asked to let the Jewish people go, he increased their load, taking it from the impossible to the unimaginable.

How could anything in the world be more desirable to the Jews than freedom? How could it be that anything, even something as great as receiving the Torah, could mean more to them than being redeemed from slavery?

What the Jews experienced by living through the makkos

The answer to this question lies in understanding the great level of clarity that the Jews reached by living through the makkos and the splitting of the sea.

For ten months, each Jew saw with ever-increasing clarity that HASHEM created, maintains, and orchestrates this world. With absolute certainty, they experienced HASHEM’s presence in their lives. This understanding brought to them to recognize certain core cognitions.

Every human has inborn understandings. Often times they are masked and subdued. Whether by environment or by desire, the human spends much of his life running from the truths that he deeply knows. When the Jews in Mitzrayim experienced HASHEM’s power and goodness, they understood the purpose of Creation. They knew that we are creations, put on this planet for a reason. We were given a great opportunity to grow, to accomplish, to mold ourselves into who we will be for eternity. We have a few short, precious years here, and then forever we will enjoy that which we have accomplished. Because they so clearly experienced HASHEM, their view of existence was changed. They “got it.”

Because of this, the currency with which they measured all good changed. They recognized that the greatest good ever bestowed upon man is the ability to change, to mold himself into something different so that he will merit to cling to HASHEM. They recognized that everything that we humans value as important pales in comparison to the opportunity to grow close to HASHEM. Because they understood this point so vividly, to them the greatest good possible was the receiving of the Torah — G-d’s word, the ultimate spiritual experience.

And so, while they anxiously anticipated the redemption from slavery as a great good that would free them from physical oppression, they valued the reason they were being freed even more. They were to receive the Torah.

Davening is me talking to HASHEM; learning is HASHEM talking to me

This concept has great relevance in our lives, as we have the ability to tap into this instinctive knowledge of the importance of learning. When a person gets caught up in the temporal nature of this world, the currency with which he rates things changes. The value system now becomes honor, power, career, or creature comforts. That is what he views as good, and that is what he desires. The more a person involves himself in these, the more important they become, and the less precious the Torah becomes. Our natural appreciation of Torah becomes clouded over by other desires and an ever-changing value system.

However, the more a person focuses on his purpose in the world, the more he values the Torah. He recognizes it as the formula for human perfection. He now sees the Torah as the ultimate gift given to man because it is both the guide and the fuel to propel his growth. With this changed perspective, the very value system with which he measures things changes, and now his appreciation, love, and desire to learn increase until finally he becomes aligned with that which HASHEM created him for — perfection and closeness to HASHEM .

For more on this topic please listen to Shmuz #166 – Sefiras HaOmer –

Rabbi Shafier is the founder of the Shmuz.com – The Shmuz is an engaging, motivating shiur that deals with real life issues.

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The Talmud relates [Pesachim 68b] that Rav Yosef would make a tremendous party on Shavuos. He would say, “If not for this special day (on which the Torah was given), look how many Yosefs there are in the market place”. Rabbi Frand explains “If not for the fact that I as a Jew have that precious gift of Torah, I would literally be ‘just another Joe'”.

On a recent Uber trip, one of my kids got into a discussion with the driver about Judaism. The driver was amazed that a Torah Observant Jew can’t eat whatever (s)he wants, can’t wear whatever (s)he wants, can’t say whatever (s)he and can’t do whatever (s)he wants. The driver remarked that he does basically anything that he wants.

What the driver missed, and what we often take for granted, is that just basic Torah observance, Shabbos, kashrus, etc, makes us great. Chazal teach that Hashem created man with a yetzer hara for desire, egocentricity and laziness and only by following the antidote of Torah and its commandments, can we rise above our base nature and become great human beings, with the possibility of connecting to people and connecting to Hashem with all our actions. When we heed the directives and follow the mitzvos of the Torah we unify the world and create a reality in which “Hashem will be One and His Name will be One”.

The Mesillas Yesharim is structured around the beraisa of R. Pinchas ben Yair which states:
“Torah leads to Watchfulness; Zeal; Cleanliness; Separation; Purity; Saintliness; Humility; Fear of Sin; Holiness; Divine Inspiration; the Revival of the Dead.”

It starts with Torah and every step is infused with different aspects of the Torah: the warnings of the Torah, the mitzvos of the Torah, the learning of the Torah, the middos of the Torah and more.

Shavuos is the time for us to raise our commitment to Torah and to growing well beyond an Uber driver in the marketplace. Chag Someach!

The unique mitzvah of all three festivals is that we have a mitzvah to rejoice on Yom Tov. Chazal state that the mitzvah of Simchas Yom Tov (joy on the festival) is fulfilled through meat and wine.

Yom Tov is a revelation of our happiness, and it also shows us what makes us happy. The meat and wine only satisfies our nefesh habehaimis, the lower and animalistic part of our souls, but this is not the entire simcha of Yom Tov. It is only needed so that we can give something to our nefesh habehaimis to satisfy it, because if we don’t satisfy it, our nefesh habehaimis will rebel and get in the way of our true, inner happiness.

Therefore, if a person thinks that Simchas Yom Tov is all about dining on meat and wine, he only satisfies his nefesh habehaimis, and he only knows of an external and superficial Simchas Yom Tov. Woe is to such a person!

What is the real happiness of Yom Tov? The possuk says, “And you shall rejoice in your festival.” Our true happiness on Yom Tov is the happiness we have in Yom Tov itself. It is to rejoice with Hashem, Whom our soul is thirsty for. It is from this that we derive the depth of our happiness, on Yom Tov.

“The righteous rejoice in Hashem.” When a person lives a life of truth, when he lives a very internal kind of life, his entire happiness is “in Hashem.” He is happy “in” his feeling of closeness with Hashem and with His Torah – the place where true happiness is derived.

So Yom Tov, the time to rejoice, is the time in which we discover the happiness we are used to. It is a time to discover if our main happiness is coming from externalities such as meat and wine (for the men) jewelry and clothing (for the women) and candy (for the children) – or if our happiness is coming from an inner place. It is only inner happiness which satisfies our spiritual needs – our Nefesh HaElokus (G-dly soul).

Yom Tov is thus not just the time in which we rejoice, but it is a time in which we clarify to ourselves what our soul is really rejoicing in. On Yom Tov, we do not just attempt to ‘connect’ ourselves to happiness, as if happiness is somewhere on the outside of ourselves. The festivals are called regalim, which implies that we reveal from within ourselves where we are habitually drawn towards, where we really are.

When a person never makes this internal clarification – when he never bothers to search himself outside, and he never discovers what truly makes him happy – he is like a dove who cannot find any rest. Yom Tov to him will feel like a time of confusion; he is like the dove who could not find any rest from the mabul (the flood), which is from the word bilbul, confusion.

A person should cleanse himself off from the desires for this world’s pleasures and instead reveal his thirst for the true happiness.

Making This Assessment

When Yom Tov arrives, the first thing we need to clarify with ourselves is: If Yom Tov really makes us happy.

You should know that most people are not really happy on Yom Tov – not even for one second do they really experience Simchas Yom Tov! [This is not just because the Vilna Gaon says that the hardest mitzvah to keep is Simchas Yom Tov, due to the fact that it is for a 24-hour period lasting for seven days. We are referring to a much more simpler and basic level, which most people do not even reach].

Most people enjoy some moments of relaxation on Yom Tov, but they never reach one moment of true simcha. If someone experiences even one moment of Simchas Yom Tov, he has begun to touch the spiritual light of Yom Tov.

In order to reach true simcha on Yom Tov, we need to remove the various bad habits we have towards the various ambitions we have that are not about holiness. We must remove any “thirsts” we may have for things that are not truthful sources of pleasure. When we begin to feel our souls’ thirst for its source – Hashem – we will find our source of happiness there.

A person needs to discover: “What makes me happy?” If someone’s entire happiness on Yom Tov comes from meat and wine, then according to Halacha he has fulfilled Simchas Yom Tov; he has made his nefesh hebehaimis happy, but he did not reach the goal of Yom Tov; he did not reach “And you shall rejoice in your festival.” He hasn’t even touched upon the real happiness of Yom Tov.

The three festivals are called the regalim. They have the power to awaken us to spiritual growth, and to know what is making us happy. From knowing that, we are able to continue that very same happiness and extend it into the rest of the year.

Rav Itamar Shwartz, the author of the Bilvavi and the Getting to Know Yourself (Soul, Emotions, Home) seforim has a free download available of Shavous Talks here. Here are some short excerpts:

Three Kinds Of Love: For the Creator, For Torah, and For Another Jew.

With the help of Hashem, we are approaching the time of the giving of the Torah. When the Torah was given, there were three great revelations. The first revelation was that Hashem came down onto Har Sinai, and opened up all the heavens and showed us that Ain Od Milvado, there is nothing besides for Him. The second revelation was the Ten Commandments, which contains the entire Torah. The third revelation was that we all stood together with one heart.

The sefarim hakedoshim reveal that there are three kinds of love that we need to seek: love for Hashem, love for the Torah, and love for the Jewish people. These three kinds of love were all revealed at the giving of the Torah. Our love for the Creator was revealed when Hashem revealed Himself to us. Our love for the Torah was revealed through the Ten Commandments. Our love for the Jewish people was revealed when we had complete unity with each other, standing together with one heart.
…Changing to a Soul PerspectiveThe choice that everyone has on this world is: If he will live life through his body, or through his
soul.

A person should ask himself how much physical gratification he’s getting, versus how much of his basic soul needs that he is getting. One should try thinking about this every day.

If anyone reflects, he’ll find that most of the day is spent on physical gratification – whether it’s coffee, smoking, food, newspapers, etc. Each to his own.
To begin to change this, one should try to make sure that he’s giving himself at least a little attention each day to his soul’s needs.

Today, pleasure is often only experienced sensually, with the physical. People often are completely devoid of experiencing any enjoyment whatsoever with regards to their souls. A person can start to change this by making sure to give his soul a little pleasure each day. This is just the beginning step.

When a person then feels a desire for something physical, such as for food – if he feels that he can give it up for something that is a soul need, he is making progress with this. It shows that he has begun to change his perspective at least a little.

Someone who does this and gets used to this will come to an amazing discovery. He will begin to actually feel others. He will feel other’s happiness when they make a simcha, and he will feel their sadness when they go through a loss. His soul will be able to feel the other’s soul.

Leaving The Body And Entering The Soul
When we heard the Torah at Har Sinai, our souls left us. In other words, we left the perspective of the body and entered the perspective of our soul!

This shows us that the way to prepare for the Torah – [at least] one of the ways – is to leave our body’s perspective and to instead enter into our soul a bit. This will resemble how the souls of the Jewish people left their bodies at Har Sinai.

May we be zoche to leave the thick materialism of this world and instead feel how we are a soul, beginning from the most basic needs of our soul [our emotional happiness], and then to the more spiritual needs of our soul, until we finally reach the highest part of our soul – the point of total d’veykus (attachment) with Hashem.

The foundation of Judaism is that there is a G-d, who is completely spiritual. G-d created both a physical and spiritual world. The centerpiece of creation is man who is composed of a physical body and a spiritual soul. Our collective purpose is to transform the world into a unified G-d connected spiritual world.

To accomplish this spiritual transformation G-d transmitted the necessary knowledge and tools in the form of the Torah. The Torah informs us how to turn physical acts into G-d connected spiritual acts. Every positive act we perform can be G-d connected, but the ones with the greatest connection power are the mitzvos G-d explicitly specified in the Torah.

The holiday of Shavuos is the day that G-d spiritually transmitted the Torah. The entire Jewish nation experienced this transmission and Moses experienced it to a much greater degree. The day is filled with a spiritual energy through which we can deepen our commitment to connect to G-d through the learning of Torah. There is also a mitzvah to eat 2 special meals and in doing so we transform the physical act of eating into a spiritual G-d connected activity.

This was written to try to capture the essence of Shavuos to all types of Jews in 60 seconds.

The Talmud relates [Pesachim 68b] that Rav Yosef would make a tremendous party on Shavuos.

He would say, “If not for this special day (on which the Torah was given), look how many Yosefs there are in the market place”. If not for the fact that I as a Jew have that precious gift of Torah, I would literally be ‘just another Joe’.
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Every Yom Tov has its own message – that idea which we are supposed to appreciate about the holiday. The main idea that Shavuos must inculcate into our psyches is “If not for this day, where would we be? What would we look like without this Torah?”

The scary thing is that if we fail to properly appreciate that which Torah does for our lives, we are left with what the Talmud calls “they have abandoned my Torah”. This is our challenge as we approach the Yom Tov of Shavuos. Everyone should have a good and meaningful holiday.

Years back, as I was beginning to become more observant, I had the opportunity to learn for a few months at a Yeshiva in Yerushalayim. I was fortunate to have found a chavrusah who was a great guy and at a similar stage in life; becoming more observant, thirsting for growth while struggling to maintain balance. We would learn Hilchos Brochos together, play soccer and trade our inchoate philosophical insights late into the night.

We both returned home to the States shortly before Succos that year. Not long after, he called to ask me to join him for the last days of yom tov at a family friend in Monsey. I gladly agreed.

As newly minted Baalei Teshuvah, we were quite concerned that our lulavim be well protected during the long bus ride from Port Authority in Manhattan to Monsey. We gingerly wrapped our respective lulavim in a manner that we hoped would provide proper cushioning. We cringed at each jostling of the crowd and we silently prayed that our carefully selected specimen would not be damaged or, worse, rendered unusable. Upon reaching Monsey, we carefully disembarked with our precious cargo and when we finally reached our host’s home we were both proud and relieved that we had protected our lulavim throughout the journey.Read more All Dressed Up… ›

The “time of the giving of our Torah” is near. We count the days from Passover until Shavuot, connecting the physical freedom of the exodus from Egypt with the spiritual freedom of receiving the Torah: And it says (Exodus 32:16): “And the tablets are the work of G-d, and the writing is G-d’s writing, engraved on the tablets”; read not “engraved” (charut) but “liberty” (chairut)—for there is no free individual, except for he who occupies himself with the study of Torah (Avot 6:2). A couple of more days and we are there.

Time flies. I’m over half a century old. and I’ve been a BT for over a quarter of a century. At this age usually the hair is graying if not disappearing altogether. The aging process is taking place before my very eyes. The reality of death is much more tangible. An inner voice cries, “Ribono Shel Olam, Al Tashlicheini Le’eit Zikna!”

On the other hand, with age comes the opportunity for retrospection. I have the ability to look back at over three decades of adult life. Many important and fateful decisions were made: what to learn in college, who to marry, to make aliyah, etc. However the most difficult and most important decision that I ever made was the decision to do Teshuvah. To receive the Torah as is, unreformed, neither conserved nor reconstructed.

What was difficult about it? Well, this was a radical idea, a move far away from my comfort zone. For someone who grew up in suburbia, it meant giving up a lot of things that I was used to. No, I will not list them! It also meant being the object of ridicule and even pity to those that did not understand what I was going through.

Looking back, I had no idea of what I was getting into. The Torah is so big! “Rabbi Chananya ben (son of) Akashya said: The Holy One, blessed be He, wanted to give Israel merit; therefore He gave them Torah and mitzvos (commandments) in abundance, as it is written: ‘G-d wanted, for its [Israel’s] righteousness, to make the Torah great and mighty’ (Isaiah 42:21).”

I was lacking Torah knowledge when I took upon myself the yoke of Heaven. I must have known about as much as the average five year old here in Jerusalem. However, what I was lacking in erudition I made up in instinct. My soul sensed where it needed to go. I had no idea of the depth of the spiritual treasures that awaited me. After all of this time I have only scratched the surface!

We live in a time where moral clarity is lacking. However, “… Thou dost light my lamp; the LORD my God doth lighten my darkness (Psalms 18:29).” The Torah that we are about to receive is an everlasting light which guides us while others stumble and fall. For instance, the whole controversy about gay marriage. For us as Jews, the controversy does not really exist, for the Torah already had its say on the issue:

Lesbian relations are forbidden and it is among the “doings of Egypt” that we have been warned about as it is said, “After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do”. The sages said, “What did they do? A man marries a man, and a woman marries a woman, and a woman marries two men” (Maimonides, Laws of Forbidden Relations 21:8).

My forefathers left Egypt and I have no intention of going back! Rather, I will rejoice in the Torah this Shavuot. I am a truly free man, free from the lewdness of Egypt, free from being politically correct, free from those that have forgotten God. Blessed is He, our God, who has separated us from those that go astray, and gave us the Torah of truth, and planted eternal life within us.

I have the good fortune to keep in touch online and offline with many non-observant friends from my childhood. Before Pesach a few of them were in search of a 2-5 minute seder, so I cut down the Beyond BT Guide to the Seder to it’s bare bone essentials using the logic that any mitzvah performed is a good thing.

If non-observant people are only willing to give 2-5 minutes for Pesach, then 60 seconds seemed about the right amount of time for the less familiar holiday of Shavuos.

Here is the first incarnation of the “60 Second Guide to Shavuos”. Comments and critiques are welcome and if you think it’s useful please send it to your friends and family:

Creation of the World and Man
– There is a G-d, who is completely spiritual
– G-d created physical and spiritual worlds
– G-d created man who is half spiritual and half physical for a purpose
– Man’s purpose is to transform the physical world into a spiritual G-d connected world

The Receiving of Torah
– To accomplish this spiritual transformation, G-d transmitted the knowledge and tools in the form of the Torah
– The spiritual encounter of receiving the Torah was experienced to some degree by the entire Jewish People and to a greater degree by Moses
– The holiday of Shavuos is a celebration of this most profound spiritual encounter between G-d and Mankind

The Role of Torah
– The role of the Torah is to help us understand and create spiritual realities
– Every act we perform has spiritual ramifications, and the acts which have the greatest power to transform the physical into the spiritual are the mitzvos specified in the Torah
– Our commitment for Shavuos is to learn about the spiritual realities described in the Torah and to dedicate ourselves to achieving the world’s purpose by performing the spiritual acts necessary to achieve that goal

In addition to learning Torah which can be accomplished by reading the above post, try to enjoy a special meal at night and during the day.